SATA SSD vs M.2 SSD for System drive

[interobang]

I am a video editor, and someone suggested recently the idea of running a super-fast M.2 Raid array as an editing drive. The trouble is that I only have 2x M.2 ports. And currently one of those is taken up buy my system drive.
My question is just how much benefit am I actually seeing from having this as my system drive. I'm tempted to clone the system to a SATA SSD to free up those M.2 ports.
Good idea or bad idea?

 

[Bustycat]

If your SSD connecting to M.2 is SATA, you will not see any difference despite saving spaces in your case.

 

[pastrychef]

Are NVMe RAIDs a typical requirement to edit videos??? Seems like a ridiculously extreme requirement.

I know a few FCPX users who use iMacs and they don't have NVMe RAIDs.

 

[jaymonkey]

Are NVMe RAIDs a typical requirement to edit videos ..

@interobang, @pastrychef,

Depends on the format and bit rate of the footage you are editing. A good quality SATA SSD will top out at just below 590 MB/s for reads which is plenty fast enough for working with SD, HD and 4K footage at a mid bit rate.

However if you have multiple high-bit rate HD or higher source files on the time line, editing 4K @ 60 FPS or using a high bit rate format such as RED 4K or 8K then a SATA SSD is just not going to cut it ... (pun intended ) ... The SATA spec just does not have the bandwidth and you will experience dropped frames during playback and stuttering while scrubbing on the time line.

If you are not experiencing dropped frames in playback or stuttering while scrubbing then your SATA SSD is handling your current workload just fine.

Try running the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test which will test your read and write speeds and give you a summary of the video formats your SSD is rated for.

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test

Disk Speed Test is an easy to use tool to quickly measure and certify your disk performance for working with high quality video! Simply click the start button and Disk Speed Test will write test your disk using large blocks of data, and then display the result. Disk Speed Test will continue to test…

apps.apple.com

Cheers
Jay

 

[pastrychef]

@interobang, @pastrychef,

Depends on the format and bit rate of the footage you are editing. A good quality SATA SSD will top out at just below 590 MB/s for reads which is plenty fast enough for working with SD, HD and 2.5K footage at a high bit rate.

However if you have multiple high-bit rate HD or higher source files on the time line, editing 4K @ 60 FPS or using a high bit rate format such as RED 4K or 8K then a SATA SSD is just not going to cut it ... (pun intended ) ... The SATA spec just does not have the bandwidth and you will experience dropped frames during playback and stuttering while scrubbing on the time line.

If you are not experiencing dropped frames in playback or stuttering while scrubbing then your SATA SSD is handling your current workload just fine.

Try running the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test which will test your read and write speeds and give you a summary of the video formats your SSD is rated for.

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test

Disk Speed Test is an easy to use tool to quickly measure and certify your disk performance for working with high quality video! Simply click the start button and Disk Speed Test will write test your disk using large blocks of data, and then display the result. Disk Speed Test will continue to test…

apps.apple.com

Cheers
Jay

Shouldn't a good quality, normal (as in non-RAIDed) NVMe SSD be enough?

 

[jaymonkey]

Shouldn't a good quality, normal (as in non-RAIDed) NVMe SSD be enough?

@pastrychef, @interobang,

Yes, for most formats a good quality NVMe SSD should be fine .. i should have made that a bit clearer my post ..

Only RED 4K or 8K would require anything faster ... but then you also run into other bottlenecks such as codec decoding/encoding on the CPU which is why RED sell the $7000 Red Rocket card.

Cheers
Jay

 

[raoimtiaz60]

I am a video editor, and someone suggested recently the idea of running a super-fast M.2 Raid array as an editing drive. The trouble is that I only have 2x M.2 ports. And currently one of those is taken up buy my system drive.
My question is just how much benefit am I actually seeing from having this as my system drive. I'm tempted to clone the system to a SATA SSD to free up those M.2 ports.
Good idea or bad idea?

I am editing normal 4k and HD videos on an i5-4590, with 24Gb Ram and an amd Rx560 4Gb. I keep my videos on a 256 Gb Sata SSD and export to the same SSD. I also use a separate 120Gb SSD for cache. My projects are mainly 1 track projects with a few inserts on other tracks. I do wedding videos. I use FCPx for 4K videos and adobe premiere for HD videos. Now you have the idea.

In my personal view, you have a very strong system and you dont need any thing extra fancy, however, you can use as much ram as possible with normal good SSDs. Have a nice day

 

[interobang]

Ok, this thread has been hijacked a little by the "do you need RAID'ed NVMe" debate.

I'm editing 4k 60p RAW and 2.6k 120p RAW. With many tracks on a timeline. With bit rates nearly reaching 500mb/s. So yes, I need the speed. Do I need RAID NVMe speed. Probably not, but what I do need is space. Probably around 2TB minimum to juggle the 5-6 projects I have on the go at any time, without having to copy them back and forth to HDD depending on which project I'm editing. 2x 1TB NVMe SSDs in RAID0 gives me the space I need without having to faff around with two separate drives. Furthermore, I'm maxing out my SATA connectors. So there is physically no space for more drives. And my PCIe slots are taken up by GPU, 10Gbs Network adaptor and Decklink card, so no room for fast PCIe to SATA expansion.

So back to my original question so check if I can continue on with the setup I am trying to achieve or get a new MObo with more connectivity options.

Is the system drive on NVMe SSD a lot (noticeably) faster than system drive on SATA SSD? Because to achieve the above I'm going to have to move my System drive to SATA SSD.

 

[interobang]

I've just realised that I could also setup a RAID0 array with two SATA M.2 SSDs for speeds of around 1000mb/s which would probably do me just fine. And it would be cheaper so I could get the 4Tb total capacity that I would like to be at, ideally.

 

[AnneOminous]

With a single HP NVMe on 4 lanes (i.e., not SATA) I'm getting 2.8GB/s read, 2.6GB/s write using Blackmagic Disk Speed test. All checkboxes green.

My SATA performance is, about as expected, a bit less than 1/4 that.

If you have a 4-lane short PCIE slot you can get an M.2 PCIE adapter card for about $6.